GlobeSt.com UPDATE: U-Store-It Completes $212M Buy

CLEVELAND-The locally headquartered self-storage REIT U-Store-It has closed on its acquisition of 3.6 million sf acquisition from National Self Storage and The Schomac Group Inc. The purchase price was $212 million. It was paid with stock, cash and assumed debt. The transaction, which closed in stages over the past 10 days, ultimately included in 66 self-stage facilities, four office parks and a mobile home park. When GlobeSt.com reported the deal as pending in March , the purchase price was $217 million and included 67 self-storage facilities. U-Store-It chief financial officer and president Steven Osgood tells GlobeSt.com the $5 million price difference is that one self-storage facility that ultimately was not acquired, and that the office parks and mobile home park were always part of the deal they just weren’t mentioned in the company’s March 3 SEC filing. The self-storage facilities that were acquired are located in three existing U-Store-It markets, Southern California, Tennessee and Arizona, and four new ones, Northern California, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The rentable sf in the self-storage portfolio is 3.4 million sf. The office parks total another 200,000 sf. No detail was provided on the mobile home park.The purchase price was comprised of approximately $61.5 million of Class B Units in the Operating Partnership; the assumption of approximately $79.5 million of outstanding debt by the Operating Partnership; and approximately $71.0 million in cash. The cash was funded with the proceeds from an $80 million mortgage loan that YSI VI LLC, an indirect subsidiary of the U-Store-It, borrowed on July 19, 2005 under a mortgage loan agreement with Lehman Brothers Bank, FSB. The loan is secured by 24 U-Store-It self-storage facilities, bears interest at a fixed rate of 5.13% and matures in August 2012, according to an SEC filing. With this acquisition, U-Store-It now owns 309 facilities in 25 states totaling approximately 18.8 million rentable sf. The company says it plans to utilize a third party Arizona-based call center, which was previously used by National, to better serve its West Coast facilities. Between the time the National Self Storage deal was announced and closed, U-Store-It closed on a few other acquisitions, including 863,000-sf in 18 self-storage facilities for $34 million from Liberty Self-Stor Ltd., a subsidiary of Liberty Self-Stor Inc.; six facilities totaling 240,000 sf (rentable) from A-1 Self Storage for $28.1 million and; another three facilities totaling 200,000 sf (rentable) from an unnamed seller for another $14.9 million.